


entombed

by tangomarine



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Buried Alive, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Light Angst, another member for the Buried Alive Club! meetings are gonna be a teensy bit more tense now, somewhat dark I guess, waking up in a grave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:33:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23142502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangomarine/pseuds/tangomarine
Summary: Unfortunately, he wakes up.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	entombed

**Author's Note:**

> sup y’all it’s Mike Time. today’s special is some good old-fashioned burial

It hurts.

That’s the only coherent thought he can form. He’s only just regaining consciousness - everything’s still blurred at the edges and dark and none of his thoughts fit together except one. It hurts. 

He knows right away that it’s not an injury. He rarely gets injured anymore. Almost nothing can hurt him, not now, not when he’s, well, whatever he is today. Mike has gone leagues beyond what physical pain could ever reach. 

But this is deeper than that. This pain is far more profound, more visceral, than anything he’s ever known. It’s excruciating. Every one of his nerves is on fire, alive with agony, and each damn second burns in a way he can barely even conceptualize. And his very being is tied to something most people can’t conceptualize. This feeling is soul-deep, reaching down into the core of everything he is and tearing at it with the vicious rage of a rabid animal. It doesn’t just hurt, it feels wrong. Deeply, fundamentally wrong, like a fish trying to breathe air. Wherever the hell he is, it’s the exact opposite of where he’s meant to be. 

It takes a moment to realize what’s happening. His memories are starting to click back into place - he gave the Watcher’s pet his statement, and then - nothing. It all runs together, and for a second that sets his mind alight with sickeningly familiar panic, he worries that It Is Not What It Is has taken him again, that he can’t trust his senses. But then he feels a wicked stab of pain in his temple - real pain, physical pain, not that deep, unnatural screaming of his entire being - and remembers her. A hunter, of course. He could practically taste her sick, predatory joy; he could feel it coming off her in waves. She shot him, put him down like a dog or one of those stupid, dime-a-dozen vampires that humans still insist on seeing as threats. And if the rumors he’s heard are true, if that hunter was the Sectioned cop that’s been hanging around Beholding’s Institute, if he took a walk in the woods with Officer Tonner, then that means- that means-

They buried him. The Archivist and his hunter buried him. They actually thought bullets would finish him, which is an interesting gap in their knowledge, but none of that matters because he has been buried alive. He serves the Vast, he is a creature of impossibly wide-open spaces and incomprehensible voids and the unthinkably massive abyss, and he has been buried alive. 

No wonder every part of his body and soul is screaming. If not for the soil that would choke him the moment he opened his mouth, he would be screaming too.

He can’t be trapped. It’s not right. It’s not possible. Mike isn’t allowed to be trapped. It doesn’t work, can’t work. Not on him. Not ever on him. That was the deal. He’d be free, finally free, and all he had to do was sell his soul. An excellent deal, all things considered. He sold his soul, he sold his humanity, just so he would never, ever have to be trapped again. 

And here he is, sealed under the earth. Trapped alone in the crushing dark, pressed in so tightly that even if he could make a sound, there would be nowhere for his screams to go. Buried. 

There’s no way of knowing how long it takes to finally claw his way out. The only tools he has are his too-short fingernails, bitten down to the quick in a habit he’s never quite managed to break, but it’s a shallow grave and he’s far more durable than most humans. 

The first thing he does is throw up, clinging to a tree for support and retching so hard his whole body convulses, throat burning. He feels shaky and raw from all that pain disappearing so abruptly. Every inch of him is sore, his vision is blurry, and the half-healed bullet wound in his skull is the beginnings of an absolute bitch of a migraine. None of it registers. Not through the pure, undiluted wrath setting his veins alight.

He knows who put him through this. He knows who has to suffer, who can lead him to them, how he can keep Magnus(Bouchard, now, he reminds himself) from retaliating after Mike shatters his attack dog and his most prized possession. What he doesn’t know, at least not yet, is exactly how he’s going to make them pay for this. None of the many horrific torments he can think of will quite convey his message.

Doubtless he’ll come up with something. He’s always had a very good imagination.

**Author's Note:**

> I love mike crew and you can tell because my favorite pastime is making him suffer
> 
> stay tuned next for twink boutta pounce(on the institute to get his vengeance)


End file.
